This morning’s big news is that Macromedia is being acquired by Adobe. Reading through the announcement, it is hard to say whether this will come to pass or not, as there are many monopoly issues surrounding this deal. Side by Side The biggest impact will probably be felt on the low end of the creative space. Here’s a rundown of the upcoming battles to come as a result of this acquisition (this is based on the product sheets on the Macromedia and the Adobe sites) and my predictions on who will win each: Vector Graphics: Freehand vs. Illustrator While Freehand got a nice following, I believe this one will end up with Illustrator winning, largely due to its installed base. Expect the Flash integration to come into future versions of Illustrator and the Freehand platform to be de-emphasized Digital Imaging: Photoshop vs. Fireworks Once again, advantage Adobe, largely due to the larger feature set and the widespread development community that has brought extensions to it. However, expect the optimize for web section of the program to improve as these will be worked on by the old Fireworks team. Web Authoring: Dreamweaver vs. GoLive Advantage Macromedia. While GoLive is a nice…